A boy encounters his heritage, a country is faced with its past

A little over two years ago, many in Brazil were again talking about the so-called suicide 30 years before of 48-year-old Jewish journalist Vladimir "Vlado" Herzog. João Batista de Andrade‘s film "Trinta Anos Depois (Thirty Years Later)" had just been released about Vlado and the 21 years of military dictatorship were very much on the minds of Brazilians. That one film should call into question a country’s past is not uncommon; we have even seen it here. Although Brazil today is a democracy and once again one of Latin America’s great countries, most Brazilians had been unwilling, at least up to that point, to revisit the horrific years of 1964-1985. At the time of his death, Vlado was the 38th detainee to "hang himself," and by virtue of his high profile as one of Brazil’s leading writers, his death brought a certain kind of attention that previous "suicides" had failed to draw. Brazil was aghast, but little could be done; the dictatorship would last another 10 years. However, 30 years later, what had indeed happened was being debated across the continent. Some would look at Vlado’s death as one of the factors that would eventually bring about the end of military dictatorship. That, together with the ongoing investigations of Augusto Pinochet in nearby Chile, has forced a new generation of Brazilians to take a hard look at their recent history.

One of those deeply affected was Cao Hamburger, a talented Brazilian filmmaker who was only 3 when a military coup set into motion years of dictatorship that would affect his childhood and early adulthood. Hamburger’s parents, both professors, were arrested, something with which Hamburger had never quite come to grips. But in 2005, he felt he could use the medium of cinema to deal with his pain. Drawing on some autobiographical elements, he and co-screenwriter Claudio Galperin began work on what would become the delightful film "The Year My Parents Went on Vacation," opening today in New York. The film is set in 1970, as the dictatorship in Brazil has just put into motion a series of laws that limit freedoms, allow for censorship, and provide for the suffering and disappearance of suspected dissidents and subversives. The film is about a 12-year-old Jewish youth, Mauro, the son of two young dissidents who flee for fear of being arrested and tortured. It is the year of the World Cup and Brazil, with Pelé at the helm, is favored to again take the championship. Brazil has begun work on a Trans-Amazonian Highway and has dammed Rio Parana, creating the world’s largest dam at Itaipu. The country is doing well economically and the Medici dictatorship sees this as a permit to end any and all opposition, and to do it ruthlessly.

In the midst of all this, Mauro is quickly whisked away by his parents from their assimilated home in the interior of Brazil to stay with his grandfather, while they flee what will surely be detention and probably more. As they drop the boy off outside of his grandfather’s apartment building in the Jewish section of Sao Paulo, they don’t even have time to go upstairs to say a quick hello — that is how frightened they are. Mauro’s parents advise the youth that if asked, he must tell anyone that his parents "went on vacation." They promise to return by the final day of the World Cup. Therein begins the odyssey of Mauro, an outsider and stranger from the countryside who is left by his parents in the Bom Retiro ("Good Respite") district of the city, home to a large Jewish and Italian community. Finding that his grandfather is not home, he curls up in the sparsely lit hallway outside his grandfather’s apartment door. In the course of events, Mauro will be renamed Moishe, as, like his biblical namesake Moses who was taken from the bulrushes, he will begin a new and different life in this rich ethnic neighborhood where cultures intersect and Jewish life thrives. With the name change comes the beginning of a different relationship with his fellow Jews and his entrance into a new community. Not only must he struggle with his new environs but he will have to cope with a new language, Yiddish. Director Hamburger, the child of a German Jewish father and Italian Catholic mother, was raised in a home without religion. He clearly has used the making of the film as a means for struggling not only with his past but with his own identity. Just as Mauro, aka Moishe, begins his personal search as the uncircumcised boy from the countryside in the midst of a very traditional community, so does he. Can he be accepted? Might he become bar mitzvah? What role will his grandfather play? What of his parents’ failure to provide for his brit milah and Jewish upbringing? How will he be accepted by the larger non-Jewish community? All of these are questions that the film attempts to resolve. These remain issues that Hamburger hopes to clarify for himself. Most important, will Mauro parents return "from vacation" and pick him up the day of the World Cup finals?

Of the many taken away by the police for arrest, torture, and more, Jews were a large percentage. The brazen tactics and the seeming lack of interest here and around the world in taking dictatorships to task set into motion copycat regimes in neighboring countries that went even further in denying rights and liberties to their people, many of whom were Jews. Argentina’s so-called Dirty War, which lasted from 1976 to 1983, was probably the most horrendous, with an estimated 13,000 who simply disappeared. It is believed that about 10 percent of those were Jews, although Jews represented about only 1 percent of the population. This past November, President Nestor Kirchner of Argentina unveiled a memorial to victims of the Dirty War. I hope, with the release in Brazil of films like "Thirty Years Later" and "The Year My Parents Went on Vacation," the dialogue will continue in Brazil and throughout South America. As these new films reach our area, these stories, often not known by most North Americans, are finally being shared.

"The Year My Parents Went on Vacation" is truly a beautiful coming-of-age film about a boy coming to grips with family, community, and his own Jewishness. The film was Brazil’s entry for this year’s Academy Award for best foreign language film, but it failed to be one of the final five. In its sensitivity, it is reminiscent of such touching films as "Lies My Father Told Me" and "The Two of Us." The acting is delightful, with the lead role of Mauro played by Michel Joelas, a student in one of Sao Paulo’s Jewish schools, and Shlomo played by Germano Haiut, a Yiddish-speaking professional actor who hails from Recife, the original home of Asser Levy, who’s been called the "founding father of North American Jewry."

The motion picture provides a warm look at the Sao Paulo Jewish community and the world of Latin American Jewry, about which few of us know. At the same time, it is also an eye-opening account of a time of tyranny. It brings to mind films like "The Official Story" that put into motion a wake-up call to a nation and indeed a hemisphere not to forget that there was once tyranny and that there must be a continuing commitment that ensures that there will be no replay. I highly recommend it.